Facebook Friend Requests and Denials

If you’ve ever been on Facebook or are still on it, then I’m sure this situation has already happened to you at some point in time.

You send a “friend request” to someone, maybe to even a person you thought was already your friend in life. Facebook then gives you a status on that person’s page that says “Friend Request Sent”. At some point later you discover the status of that request has returned to “Add Friend”, which can only mean one thing, they’ve turned your request down. You start to question whether it was an erroneous mistake on their part or whether you never sent them one at all, so you send it again. But after it happens a second time, you begin to accept the truth. They don’t want to be your friend.

This is one of the bigger downfalls I’ve found with social media, because often someone who experiences this very thing might never find out the reason why that other person doesn’t want to be connected to them. Lately, I have had this happen to me a number of times on Facebook with people I’ve wanted to get to know, with others I’ve known casually in life, to even some I’ve known for years but haven’t seen in a good, long while. None have ever given me an explanation of why they’ve turned down my request, which has often left me scratching my head, feeling slightly down, and asking myself if I’ve done something wrong. But when this happened to me just recently with a fraternity brother of mine from college, I remembered one of the quotes I had used on my blog recently.

“If God shuts a door, stop banging on it. Trust that whatever is behind it, is not meant for you and move on.”

Could it be possible that a connection to that person, even on social media, might not be the healthiest for my spiritual path? Or is it possible there isn’t any need for me to be connected to them because we have nothing in common? Or maybe it’s something altogether different. Does it really matter?

For those I’ve either known casually or rather well in life that this has ever happened with, I’ve often gone to the place in my head where I wondered if I’ve hurt them in some way and owe them an amends. But I’ve come to accept that I may never know whether this is true or not and the only thing I can do is send them love, forgiveness, peace, and light, and move on.

As for my own “friend request” actions, I must say that I’ve only ever turned down two people since returning to Facebook last year. With each it was with people who were part of my sex and love addiction past, which I felt would be extremely unhealthy to be connected to on any level. But I can safely say this wouldn’t be the reason for any of the denials of my own friend requests because I haven’t ever sent them to those I used to heavily engage in addictions with.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that I really just don’t need to be banging on the door to be someone’s Facebook friend anymore once they turn me down. If they don’t want to be my friend, then I’m going to accept it’s God’s will and there’s probably a good reason for it, one that’s not worth wasting my time or energy trying to figure out. Instead, I decided I’m going to move on and invest it in those who have or continue to accept my friendship. J

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson